Photon UI - Now in Beta (Opt-Out)

Omnis_Decline · October 14, 2022, 8:40am

This, I think, is the central problem with the new UI. They’re trying to “fix” the “problem” of information overload when that’s core game functionality and hiding it is actively harmful to the experience. I’m a new player and I’m seeing the problem, so it’s FAR from just being experienced players complaining.

The new UI being pushed onto users like this while it’s not beta-ready and hasn’t addressed the most game-critical and consistent feedback from alpha is a singular reason sufficient to have prevented me from spending money on the game. I was 2 hours from buying a starter pack (and leaning toward a more expensive option) and 30 mins of photon convinced me to wait until I see how they handle their response to this screw-up.

Marvins_Vyvorant · October 14, 2022, 9:42am

Battling to understand what CCP was trying to achieve with the new UI. Information has been removed from the Windows but they didn’t shrink accordingly and the information that is still available requires you to enlarge the windows even further.
Too much empty, unused space in the windows.
It’s a massive step backwards and the UI is clearly not ready for Beta Testing

Marvins_Vyvorant · October 14, 2022, 9:44am

Great description of the shortcomings

Sodina_Dawnfright · October 14, 2022, 10:03am

There is an option, where you can switch from icon to list option which reduces the needed space but its still bulky/to big.

Artimis_kraw · October 14, 2022, 10:04am

For some reason, the layout I create for one character is not transferring to the other characters on the same account. I want uniformity and cba to re-do my UI three times on each of my 3 accounts.

How can I make it so that the UI is account wide!

D_Kins_Cider · October 14, 2022, 11:05am

Not only this, but it’s still missing key information for how drones operate.

Previously, when you hovered over a drone, you got a pop-up message that told you what the drone was doing (beyond idle/fighting/returning/mining/whatever) - like “Guarding fleetmate X” or “Assisting Fleetmate Y”. Instead of useful information like that, you now get the stats on the drone - something that you either knew, or could already obtain by right clicking and hitting “Info”.

The last change to drones (beyond the largely useless abyssal drones) was when CCP tried to change how they worked in combat, we assume to try to reduce the amount of AFK/bot drone boats doing sites. Instead of fixing that issue, they instead completely broke how assisted/guarding drones worked, and they had to back that change out (after they first told us that their change didn’t kill the functionality, and then told us the change was “working as intended” - and yet they reverted it.

People ask why we’re so negative sometimes - it’s because we’re so conditioned through past experiences to expect disappointment.

D_Kins_Cider · October 14, 2022, 11:06am

As an aside, I’d love to know what CSM members think of all this - I realise though that they’re bound by NDAs on what they can or cannot say…

D_Kins_Cider · October 14, 2022, 11:15am

Oh, for it to only be for three accounts…

The UI layout settings are basically per character.

In your C:\Users\XXXXXX\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\e_eve_sharedcache_tq_tranquility\settings_Default folder (where XXXXXX is your Windows username) are a series of .DAT files. The files that keep your UI layout are the core_char_1234567890.dat files.

The way I do it. Before you start this, you may want to take a backup (copy) of the entire settings_Default folder (so you can recover it if you mess up).

Fix the UI on one character, log it off (close the client entirely I find is safest).
Go to that directory, sort by “Modified Date”.
Find the most recently modified core_char file. Copy it.
Rename the copied file to "core_char_MASTER.dat.
Take a copy of the new file.
Click on the “core_char_1234567890.dat” file for the next character you want to fix (if you’re fixing them all, just select the next oldest one. After clicking it, wait a second, and click the MAIN part of the file name again. This should allow you to change the name of the file. Don’t change it - hit CTRL-C (with the file name selected other than the .dat extension), then hit esc. Delete the file.
Click on the “core_char_MASTER - Copy.dat” file. Click the name again like in step 6, to get the rename the file UI loaded - then click CTRL-V to copy the name of the recently-deleted file over the name. Hit enter.
Repeat steps 6 and 7 for each core_char_1234567890.dat file for each of your characters.

Now. The core_char_1234567890.dat file stores your in-game window locations, but does NOT store your overview settings. But it DOES include the chat windows you had open. And your Agency bookmarks. But not your Regional Market quickbar contents. Such a mess…

Thaane_Cawdor1 · October 14, 2022, 2:07pm

Got some more feedback on what I consider to be a glitch.

When I’m in space, I like the Inventory window to be set with “Always open in separate window”. This allows me to keep the normal Inventory window in compact mode, and the ship wreck loot window in normal mode, with the Loot All button.

The glitch is, that setting transfers to all the other inventory windows. So when I open a Station Container in port, I get a separate window, instead of that container opening in the same window.

If I deselect “Always open in separate window” in my docked inventory windows, I lose that setting while in space.

My suggestion is, since there are already separate configurations for each window, including location, dimensions, compact or not, light background or not, could you go the extra step to localize the other drop-down menu settings to each inventory window?

Al_thea · October 14, 2022, 3:23pm

Update. Since I found out how to get it back to how I had it. Now whenever I login, out/in; the neocom icons just disappear. So you have to unlock the neocom, adjust the bar to make the icons larger or smaller for them to reappear. Put it back to the preferred size and re-lock neocom. I’m not expecting any fix, but why not present yet another flaw.

Sparrow_Walkabout · October 14, 2022, 6:04pm

The missing drone controls like focus & aggressive/passive currently makes photonUI not workable longterm, so that should be a priority if you want people to test more.

Generally why is photon so incrediby bulky? It seems even worse at wasting space with MASSIVE empty areas for most windows? Condense condense CONDENSE!

Why does a compact window have no close button instead needing multiple precise clicks to close? (truly awful when you need a window go away during combat) Why do compact windows remove crucial functionality, like loot all for 1 example.

Why is ‘loot all’ functionality so incredibly awkward to access? I understand not having a keypress but it’s so annoying to access the click. It used to be possible to get an extra window to pop near your overview, but photon appears to preclude that. Why isn’t there a loot all button at the overview?

You do all this work on the nice EVE graphics, but no1 ever gets to see them because of the interface constantly needing 7 windows to show what should fit in 1 window. As it is you get to see about a 5cm square of space once in a while because the interface is so wasteful. Photon should be your opportunity to show EVE’s flight (even hangar) graphics finally, not a step backwards that make them even less obtainable. Photon should be about condensing 90% of the in flight crucial information so you get to actually see some of the EVE graphics one day. 90% of the agency window is still wasted space for 1 missed opportunity. In Photon so many things actually got worse & became more bulky like the wallet, half as much info in twice as much space.

Here’s the brief you should have been given:
Don’t even consider it a new UI until you can get all of the following flight information in to 1 quarter of the screen estate, no more, with proper top to bottom of screen lists. →

→ Current system, DScan, FULL local pilots list, overview, local bookmarks, star route, quests/mission, all of the agency information pertaining to current system & all neighbouring system (FOB, sig count, anom count, escalations, incursions really everything), Drones health & status, Ship status, weapons & systems, cap, shields, armour, hull, ammo, loot/all, inventory, fleet info, watch lists ← all of it. 1 quarter of screen estate. go!

Start over, be ruthless, cut everything especially all borders & waste, use icon+count number liberally & CONDENSE!!!

As it stands, your interface guy is nullifying years of work of your entire graphics team/s. Photon is making the wasted screen estate even worse, not better, with all the empty spaces, massive title bars, redundant borders, windows that should be combined. Plus Photon misses various crucial functionality. Backwards step. Sorry.

Feilamya · October 14, 2022, 9:55pm

So, apparently the gigantic waste of screen space that are the new window title bars made it into the final version, showing that CCP have wiped their asses with all the feedback they received. Why even bother to give feedback then?

Jeven_HouseBenyo · October 14, 2022, 9:59pm

I’m opting out of Photon. The transparency issues makes reading any window or option tabs very difficult. The gradients in the Industry window are also hard to see. Space is taken up in windows for things that do not need the extra space, but icons that need to stay big are shrunken. This is not a space saver where I can see more of what is going on around my ship, instead it’s return of the space hogging windows.

I’d rather just have the old/classic colored NeoCon buttons back and the rest of the UI left as it was. If that one request cannot happen, leave the UI alone and find something else to change for change’s sake. This is busy-work.

Jeven

Feilamya · October 14, 2022, 10:01pm

Just make the UI fully customizable and let the players design their own.

Denret_Adoudel · October 14, 2022, 10:35pm

it’s dog poop.
you completely broke the item default sorting, and type sorting so now different types of salvage and containers are not grouped together any more so moving stuff around between places takes way more time because you cant just shift-click first and last item of one type since there’s other stupid crap mixed in between if you want to keep your inventory organized…
everything has a completely useless huge border padding with empty spaces so you lose a ton of content space in every window, not to mention compact mode hides a lot of highly useful and frequently used buttons like the lock button for some reason, AND estimated value for items in holds!!! even with compact mode on there’s still more empty wasted space, for example all the overview columns i had to make far wider to fit the exact same info without clipping text like alliance and corp tickers off…
and moving several commonly used buttons like loot all, and moving the recover probes button and making it a really vague tiny icon is very inconvenient.

also you are still linking to the old closed thread SISI thread, which links to the old closed TQ thread, in the ingame menu when you disable the UI which seems incredibly counter-productive if you want feedback…

and i have a really bad feeling none of this will be fixed because some of these exact same things were already mentioned way back in spring in the Sisi feedback thread and it’s still craptastic now…

Roland_Schlosser · October 14, 2022, 11:42pm

Photon sucks, stop trying to force it on us. Don’t auto enable ■■■■ you ■■■■■■■.

Vjorn_Angannon · October 15, 2022, 12:48am

Moko Musana wrote a script that, once properly setup, automates the synchronization of multilple character GUI settings.

Post #6 describes how to get character and user ID’s. Post #8 has the script with instructions.

Once setup, it takes about 3 seconds for the script to sync my 5 accounts. And it WILL update the overview settings as well across all accounts/characters listed in the script.

Hope this helps!

Vjorn_Angannon · October 15, 2022, 12:51am

Yes there is a simple way to do this!

Moko Musana wrote a script that, once properly setup, automates the synchronization of multilple character GUI settings.

Post #6 describes how to get character and user ID’s. Post #8 has the script with instructions.

Once setup, it takes about 3 seconds for the script to sync my 5 accounts. And it WILL update the overview settings as well across all accounts/characters listed in the script.

Hope this helps!

niki_lasvegas · October 15, 2022, 3:01am

Pretty bad UI to be honest. Inferior in every way compared to the old one. Please dont do this.

Nohaymota · October 15, 2022, 9:22am

Dear CCP Photon UI team.

I really like all the hard work you are putting into the Photon Ui, and the latest update. Thank you.

Changes I would like in Eve Evolved:

1 - I would like to be able to change the colour seen on gates and station overview icons, when you set your destination. The colour in the overview “Yellow” is not working for me, on this new Ui, and it was terrible before. It needs to be brighter, but preferably as customizable, as other things in the overview.

2 - The capacitor/module Hud should be floating, able to be mooved anywhere on screen, and have the function to snap to edges, allways on top like the other windows. Also the ability to hide it, with the hide all windows function.

3 - The drone window needs to have smaller drone icons in a compact mode, with the ability to just have text instead of drone models, to make the window even more compact.

4 - My eyes hurt from using the new Ui for 10 hours straight. This has never been an issue for me before. I think it is the darkness of it and shadows. Please make it flat, and more costumizable, with window edge colouring, and background.

5 - The scanning window needs some space between the scan range and direction part of the window. It is a little hard to see. Maybe make the text bold or encase the two in a light frame to clearly see the two function.

Other than that great job, can’t wait to see my posted changes emplied.